Joel Santo DomingoLenovo ThinkPad 13The Lenovo ThinkPad 13 is an inexpensive rugged laptop with all-day battery life; it's a fine choice whether you're buying it for a college student or a small business.

The Lenovo ThinkPad 13 is an inexpensive rugged laptop with all-day battery life; it's a fine choice whether you're buying it for a college student or a small business.

Small-to-medium business (SMB) workers and college students have similar needs with regards to the laptops they carry around every day. Light weight, long battery life, a durable build, a comfortable keyboard, and compatibility with existing apps are prime requirements, and the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 (starts at $509.25; $531.75 as tested) meets them all. Add the affordable price and you have the makings of our latest Editors' Choice.

Design and Features The ThinkPad 13 has the same Lenovo industrial design as the latest ThinkPad T460s, but in a smaller body that measures 0.75 by 12.69 by 8.77 inches and weighing 3.14 pounds. It's available in silver (like our test unit) or standard black. The top is aluminum and the bottom case is standard ABS plastic, but we're certain it will be able to handle your commute, whether to class or your next sales call. Sure, the Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch is a bit thinner and lighter, but we think the ThinkPad 13 is still easy to toss in a bag for a quick walk across the quad.

Like most ThinkPad laptops, the ThinkPad 13 has been tested to pass MIL-STD 801G durability tests for factors like high altitude, humidity, high and low temperature, mechanical shock, rapid temperature change, blowing sand intrusion, and vibration. It also has to pass other tests, including dropping the laptop onto its corners, grabbing and lifting the laptop by its screen, and even pouring a bit of liquid on the keyboard. These reassurances can help calm your mind if you or a family member has lost a laptop to physical abuse.

The 13.3-inch, full HD (1,920-by-1,080) IPS panel has wide viewing angles and displays clear visuals in a brightly lit room, thanks to the matte finish and antiglare coating on its screen. Text is razor-sharp, and the display is nice enough to use for art projects or proofing a webpage that a freelancer has mocked up for you. It's certainly much easier on the eyes than the somewhat-grainy display on the HP EliteBook 745 G3. The stereo speakers are notably loud and clear, with little distortion, even at full volume. You should be able to fill a medium-size room with sound, which can help if you're giving a presentation at a new client's office or simply watching Netflix.

ThinkPads are known for their keyboards, and the one on the ThinkPad 13 is one of the best we've used on a budget system. The scalloped keys feel good, with nary a hint of sponginess. We think you could type on them all day, which you'll appreciate whether you're a college student or a lawyer. Also present are a one-piece touchpad and Lenovo's TrackPoint with discrete mouse buttons. If you're younger than 35, you may not have ever used a pointing stick controller, but it's a boon for those who like them.

There's a good selection of I/O ports on the left (the power jack, a OneLink+ dock connector, and one USB 3.0 port) and right (a headset jack, an HDMI port, a SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports, a security lock slot, and a USB-C port). Notably absent is an Ethernet port, which would require an adapter (which is not included) or the optional OneLink+ dock. Wireless connectivity comes by way of 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.

The ThinkPad 13 comes with 4GB of system memory, which is upgradable to 16GB of you're handy with a screwdriver. The included 128GB M.2 SSD module is also replaceable, though we think that 128GB is plenty of local storage unless you're a video hobbyist. Even then, you can use cloud storage services or connect a speedy external drive to the USB 3.0 or USB-C ports to add to the storage space. There's no bloatware in any case, and there's still about 100GB free on the drive. The system has a one-year warranty that can be upgraded up to 5 years.

Performance An Intel Core i3-6100U processor (with Intel HD Graphics 520) powers the ThinkPad 13. It's more than adequate, since it returned a very good score of 2,588 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test. That's about the same as our last Editors' Choice, the Toshiba Tecra C50-B1503 (2,587), which used an older Core i5 processor. Likewise, the ThinkPad performed admirably on the Handbrake (2:55) and Photoshop CS6 (6:07) tests, though neither time was at the top of the rankings. Its 3D gaming performance is moderately weak, with frame rates in the high teens and low 20s. That's enough to play older games like Half Life 2 or Minecraft, but certainly not enough to play one of the latest AAA games. In other words, the ThinkPad 13 is excellent at getting work down with a little extra power for casual games.

Battery life is very good. The ThinkPad 13 lasted almost 9 hours (8:46) on our rundown test, which certainly qualifies as all-day battery life. You could work a full day and still have some juice for the train ride home, particularly if you let the computer sleep during lunch and break time. Other systems in this category lasted anywhere from 4 to 9.5 hours. The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch is a notable exception, since it lasted 17.5 hours on the same test.

If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive laptop that's capable of lasting the four years of a college education or a similar amount of time to write off the costs on the tax forms for your business, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 should be at the top of your list. It's capable of surviving military-grade testing, has a speedy processor for doing real work and forward-looking technology including USB-C, and comes with Windows 10 Pro—and does it all for less than $550. It's less expensive, has a higher-resolution screen, is more comfortable to type on, is faster on performance benchmarks, and outlasts our previous Editors' Choice, the Toshiba Tecra C50. Therefore we have no qualms naming the ThinkPad 13 our latest Editors' Choice for SMB laptops.

About the Author

Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore ... See Full Bio

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